On Monday's broadcast of The 700 Club, Christian Coalition founder, televangelist, '88 presidential candidate, and friend-o-Bush Pat Robertson unloaded on Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, saying, "We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability," and accusing Chavez of intending to create a "launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism" in Venezuela.…
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— go to most recent comments26 - Mark the Sane and Sensible
Better that 200 billion spent on promoting American power and sovereignty abroad and protecting our chief allies like Israel than spending it on wasteful domestic social programs. There is nothing more nonsensical than investing money on the underclasses and not getting a return on that investment. We receive a hefty return on our investment in ME politics. Now if we could just take out Iran and Syria, the ME would be ours to run with Israel. That's the way it should be. Our free and democratic way of life is far superior to the way of life of the Muslims. We aren't afraid of having women show their skin, either.
But of course, If you are a Jew hating anti-Israeli, you are against Mr. Bush's war to free the ME from a stupid and repressive medieval culture.
27 - Heloise
The Pat Robertson Doll complete with pins...on sale now.
Heloise
28 - We
"Religious fundamentalist issues a fatwa..."
Oh wait... That wasn't from the middle east.
Punishment ? None.
Thrown out of the country ? No.
Secret pat on the back from the Bush Admin ? Priceless.
29 - Mark the Sane and Sensible
How sad when Americans aren't clamoring for the demise of a Marxist foreign dictator. Be sure to renew your Daily Worker subscriptions, comrades.
America used to be a great country.
30 - Eric Berlin
Yeah man, thing's have really gone over to the pinkos...
Wait, no. Incorrect. The social conservative-leaning GOP runs Congress and the White House.
That's right.
And most Americans are more worried about Americans getting killed in Iraq (and the U.S.) then bothering about a Latin American President.
31 - Mark the Sane and Sensible
Eric: that's why we have a military, to go fight our wars. Why do you think we invest so many billions in national defense? To let it sit around and collect dust? Don't you think that our ALL VOLUNTEER military personnel knows implicity that they someday would be asked to possibly sacrifice their lives? Our country was built upon this very principle. Do you think in the 19th century people sat around and questioned military service when it was time to go out an kill Indians, Frenchmen, and Spaniards to expand this nation's power? You must have a very naive view of what the military and the warrior mentality is all about. But what should I expect from the modern metrosexual mentality that worries more about feelings than fighting?
Hugo Chavez is interfering with our oil supply which we so desperately need until we can get the tree huggers to lighten up on ANWR.
32 - Eric Berlin
Why do you think we invest so many billions in national defense? To let it sit around and collect dust?
If that's your position, you should be advocating that we nuke some folks.
Hugo Chavez is interfering with our oil supply...
So should we kill him for "interfering" ?
Do you realize how extreme your positions are (he said politely)?
33 - Eric Berlin
Wow, Mark, I just realized that you remind me of the military planners from the brilliant film, Spies Like Us.
You're thinking with your dick again.
It got me through high school.
Hilarity.
34 - Mark the Sane and Sensible
I am an extremist when it comes to people or countries that interfere with America's strategic military and economic business domestically or abroad. However, I am not the type of extremist that flies planes into skyscrapers because I've been told that 76 virgin women will be waiting for me with legs spread wide open when my soul reaches the afterlife.
35 - Dave Nalle
>>If the UN does not demand that Mr. Robertson make a public formal apology to President Chavez of Venezuela, then the democratic world is permitted absolute free speech and open dialogue â€" even on the airwaves. No more libel. No more laws or restrictions to impede free speech that will debunk the liars who need the veil of censorship.<<
What the UN ought to be doing is investigating the rapid decline in basic human rights in Venezuela since the Chavez regime took over. Take a look at the Venezuela pages at Human Rights Watch.
Dave
36 - Eric Berlin
And what action would your extremism dictate toward those who interfere with the United States' "strategic military and economic business domestically or abroad"?
37 - Silas Kain
We spend billions in national defense. We've invested billions in aid to Israel and Egypt. We invested in the development of Gaza and the West Bank and now we are asked to fund the pullout. The Israeli government is leveling the majority of buildings that existed in these settlements! Why? Couldn't they have reached some kind of arrangement with the Palestinians? All that labor. All those materials. Flushed down the toilet for what?
Now just because I am questioning America's financial aid of Israel does not make me anti-Semitic, so don't even play that game with me. I'm asking legitimate questions of my government about the wisdom behind the expenditures that are being made. Imagine the possibilities if we had reduced Middle East aid by 50% since 1948. Where would technology be today? Would we have finally developed energy alternatives? Would we have an efficient mass transit system? We'll never know but one thing we can be certain of is that we must learn from the mistakes we've made.
If we're concerned at all about the world we leave behind for our children and grandchildren we better take our heads out of our collective asses and start asking the questions that must be asked. Both sides of the political aisle should be clamoring for government accountability. I don't understand why it is that we can't come together on this one simple issue. We're supposed to be an intelligent people. Wake up, America.
38 - Silas Kain
However, I am not the type of extremist that flies planes into skyscrapers because I've been told that 76 virgin women will be waiting for me with legs spread wide open when my soul reaches the afterlife.
Come on now. Why do people insist on promoting this line of idiotic logic? They didn't plow into the WTC to meet virgins on the other side. The issues that have brought us to this point are not that simplistic and to reduce them to this drivel is an insult to all the American blood that has been shed in response to these attacks.
39 - Mark the Sane and Sensible
Silas, consider this ...
"Flushed down the toilet for what?"
I ask myself the same thing when I hear about crackheads and welfare mothers getting more tax payer money to subsidize their decrepitude.
"Now just because I am questioning America's financial aid of Israel does not make me anti-Semitic, so don't even play that game with me."
After what Jews have had to endure 70 years ago, not to mention the last 3000 years, I'd say that any carping from anyone can be rightfully construed as Jew hating. Look, in America, you say boo about blacks and Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton the whole NAACP are calling for national boycotts, and they were enslaved in America for only 250 years.
it's like this, Silas, the world owes it to the Jews to maintain an Israeli state. After all, we looked the other way during WW2 and that has to be rectified. And forget about comparisons to American Indians and African slaves. They don't rate or compare in the level of persecution or duration of struggle. A couple of hundred years vs. 3000 years? You must be joking. Yes, I'll cut to the chase. I am not an egalitarian and I don't place everything on the same moral plane. Certain cultures are superior to others. In my estimation, the Jewish race is among the superior cultures by virtue of what they have achieved in science, medicine, the arts, and business over many hundreds of years. If you have a problem with that you need to really study history very carefully and see who has influenced more human development and as a result, suffered more indignities.
40 - Eric Berlin
Silas -- I don't think reduction in foreign aid would have really done all that much to improve American technoligcal development (or anything else).
Israel is a vital strategic ally. They're our only rock-solid friend in a troubled region.
Now, I think you could certainly make a good case for jacking R&D into alternative fuel sources now and going forward. That makes all kinds of sense to me.
41 - Dave Nalle
But the Jews are still not superior to the Scotts. Just keep that in mind, sasenach.
Dave
42 - Al Barger
Let me second Mark the Sane [comment 39] re: Jewish superiority. Pound for pound, the Hebrews have contributed more to humanity than any other tribe ever.
Most significantly to this political discussion though, I would emphasize the general MORAL superiority of Jews, and particularly the state of Israel.
The short version of this: marvel at the restraint of Israel. They have tolerated more absolutely vicious crap than any humans could ever be expected to from schmucks whom they could squash like insects with a minimum of effort.
By this point, Palestinians should all be on their goddam knees thanking the Israelis for not having wiped them out even in just the last couple of years. They'd certainly have been more than justified in absolutely leveling Jenin, for starters.
43 - Silas Kain
In my estimation, the Jewish race is among the superior cultures by virtue of what they have achieved in science, medicine, the arts, and business over many hundreds of years. If you have a problem with that you need to really study history very carefully and see who has influenced more human development and as a result, suffered more indignities.
Hmmm. In my estimation there is NO Jewish race. There is the Jewish Faith. That being said, I agree that Jews have achieved more than most throughout the course of history but that does not make them superior. I also agree that the world owed Israel a state of its own. Where we part company is the location of the state and I won't get into that debate here. Now, if you want to adhere to the Old Testament one could easily argue that we all are Jews thanks to Noah. So now who's superior?
44 - Al Barger
Well Silas, that little parlor game about Noah is cute. However, Palestinians don't generally seem to have much trouble figuring out which ones are Jews when they're packing bomb belts.
45 - Jon Radcliffe
If the state of Isreal is so superior, why does it have to go to the American tax payer every year and beg for billions of their hard earned cash. And futher more after they get the cash and whatever other good's, eg Superior arm's and technologies, they then sell on the technologies to china.
46 - Eric Olsen
perhaps it's time for Cindy Sheehan to "take out" Pat Robertson
47 - Mark the Sane and Sensible
Jon: part of the rationale to contribute to the protection of Israel is America's (I should really say, "and Franklin Delano Roosevelt's," a latent anti-Semite and anti-Catholic if there ever was one) belated compensation for ignoring the Holocaust when it had full knowledge that it was taking place from 1938 to 1945.
As for Israel doing business with China, have you been to a WalMart lately? You should stop reading ZNet or The Nation. They will rot your brain to a small prune.
48 - Aaman
Some interesting food for thought on why Pat won't be treated as a terrorist
49 - Eric Berlin
C Sheehan v. Pat Robertson -- I love it.
Undercard:
R Reiner v. M Malkin
50 - ss
Pat Robertson's been in the White House.
Not lately, I'll conceed that point to the right, but...
Pat Robertson's been in the White House. To meet with the President.
Why America? Why are you doing this to yourself?
51 - Eric Olsen
well Mark (TSAS), you are right about isreal and the Jews, but ever so wrong about Bruce and Little Steven, so I guess you come out even
52 - Silas Kain
"Well Silas, that little parlor game about Noah is cute. However, Palestinians don't generally seem to have much trouble figuring out which ones are Jews when they're packing bomb belts."
Not a parlor game, Mr. Barger. Where are the fundamentalists on all sides? Judaism, Christianity and Islam have a common patriarch in Abraham. According to the Good Book, Abram only came around some 300 years after the flood. So, once again, we all are descended from the one original tribe.
I can't argue the point about Palestinian terrorism but I think it's important to note that the Palestinians have been shabbily treated by everyone including their Arab brethren. Were Palestinians and Jews able to put aside their differences for a moment and compare notes they would find that they have more in common than most people on this planet.
53 - Al Barger
Unlike their Arab brethren, however, the Israelis try and try to play nice with the Palestinians. Making nice, however, has only gotten the Israelis more terrorism in response, not less.
It's not the Jews who are unwilling to try to put aside differences and work together.
54 - Mark the Sane and Sensible
re: silas post 43
"In my estimation there is NO Jewish race. There is the Jewish Faith."
only some goyische schmuck would say that.
"I think it's important to note that the Palestinians have been shabbily treated by everyone including their Arab brethren."
Perhaps if they repudiated the PA and didn't harbor terrorists in their homes, they wouldn't be hit with IDF rocketfire.
55 - Silas Kain
only some goyische schmuck would say that.
Sorry, my little schmeggegie. My paternal family comes from the Warsaw Ghetto. Far from goyim. My paternal grandmother was a shiksa but grandfather was not. As you know from Jewish tradition, religion follows the maternal line so I'm a goyische schmuck by accident but consider myself mispucheh. Kush meer in tokhes, sweetie.
56 - Nancy
What a bunch of racist crock! Spare us that the Jews - or anybody else - are "superior" to anybody. Judaism is a culture & a faith, not a race, derived from roots in the cultures of the fertile crescent (particularly the Sumerian) which was primarily populated by the semitic tribes - which still could not be even tenuously construed as "racial". DNA testing will not proclaim anybody a jew, an arab, or an italian.
If the jews - or historically, the israelites - have been "persecuted" in the past, it's because until the christians (also a semitic-derived cultural group) came along, the israelites were busy themselves in attacking & persecuting anybody they came across who had anything they wanted - particularly land - & they then used their religion to justify the genocide. However, most current biblical archeologists & historians - including Israeli jews - now agree that the stories in the O.T. are just that: stories. There was and is no evidence of either enslavement or exodus of the israelites in Egypt, either in Egyptian records (& they were maniacs for recording everything, especially who they conquered) or anywhere else, including Hittite or Assyrian/Babylonian records. No independent confirmation, no archeological confirmation, nada. Zip. Wars against the various kingdoms of the ancient israelis by various outsiders such as the Babylonians can not be considered "persecution", because war is war, and all parties were busy persecuting - or prosecuting - war with everybody. The only true persecution started with the rise to power of the christian movement around the 4th century, and a few centuries later by the rise of Mohammed, who considered he'd been double-crossed by a group of jews in medina & decided all jews were to blame (a trait perhaps learned from the christians?). At that point, yes indeed, jews were & have been horribly persecuted; but not prior, at least, not worse than anybody else; those that oppressed them tended to oppress everybody: they were equal-opportunity oppressors, one could say. As mentioned elsewhere, like their arab/semitic cousins, they have been happily engaged in mutual, mass, systematic intertribal slaughter since before Jericho was founded; a favorite form of semitic recreation.
As for modern Israel, they are no friends of the US or anybody else. They take our money, spy on us, steal our technology & sell it behind our backs to our enemies, in short behave just as badly if not worse than the arabs. They would sell us out to Kim Jong Il in a West Bank second if they could figure out a way to do it. The US only continues to suck up to them to guarantee a jumping-off point for war purposes in the middle east. Otherwise they are not our friends, because they themselves consider that they have no friends, a philosophy the US would perhaps be wise to emulate.
57 - Silas Kain
Yikes, Nancy! You're gonna get some people all mishuggah! You'll be branded an anti-Semite. You'll be vilified! Welcome to my world.
58 - Nancy
If they can't stand the facts (or can't be bothered to read the archeological records), then they should get out of the kitchen, to mix metaphors. Of course, selling the US off to Kim Il doesn't make the Israelis any different from or worse than anyone else; as far as I can determine, just about anyone in the world is willing to do that.
Oh, thenk yew. I guess there's plenty of room on your hot seat, then?
59 - Mark the Sane and Sensible
Sorry to burst your bubble, Silas, but you aren't Jewish. The bloodline must flow through the mother. Your grandmother was not Jewish, so that means your mother was not Jewish, and hence, neither are you. If you were actually Jewish, I'd call you a self-hating Jew, just like I would your pals Howard Zinn and Noam Chumpsky.
lech tiezdayen, bubbie.
60 - Bob A. Booey
Gai kakhen affen yam!
61 - Bob A. Booey
I'm not Jewish, just very worldly.
That is all.
62 - Mark the Sane and Sensible
hey nancy, I guess you're going to tell me next that the Holocaust didn't happen either, right?
63 - Bob A. Booey
Pat Robertson would hate this whole verkakte discussion.
That is all.
64 - Nancy
No, Mark, not at all. There is far too much documentation of all of it for sanity. It was, unfortunately, far too real.
65 - Mark the Sane and Sensible
nancy post 64--
Then your admonishments toward Jews, questioning their racial status, and criticizing US policy toward Israel paints you in the harshest Jew hating light, I am sorry to say. If you are anti-Israeli, then you are pro-Pally. It's a B/W issue, Nancy, there's no other way to look at it. You sound like you have a real bug up your ass when people praise Jews and Jewish accomplishments
Get out that stupid egalitarian gray area! Both sides are not equally culpable! Jews have been persecuted for 3000 years! How would you like it if YOUR people were blamed for killing the figurehead of the Christian world? How many Jews died because of THAT nonsense?
based on the what Jews have had to endure for centuries, they deserve a free pass forever.
66 - Nancy
Not at all. No one forces me to choose sides. Not being willing to slaver all over Israeli toes doesn't make me "pro-Pally"; have you ever considered the possibility that one could hold BOTH or ALL groups in contempt? And wrongs done to generations gone by doesn't give ANYONE, black, white, jew, arab, christian (no, I'm not one), muslim, or buddhist, a "free pass forever" or for any other length of time, either. We are all responsible for what WE do. "Let the dead bury the dead".
67 - Eric Olsen
no one gets a free pass forever because of past wrongs done against them, but they do get a country - and friends fuck each other over all the time, doesn't mean they aren't friends
68 - Nancy
Friends do not 'fuck each other over all the time'. When that happens, it's called betrayal, and they are no longer friends.
69 - Mark the Sane and Sensible
"have you ever considered the possibility that one could hold BOTH or ALL groups in contempt?"
Yes, you could in theory, but it would be morally reprehensible to do so if you really understood the issue.
"We are all responsible for what WE do."
However, the Jewish race is not responsible for the horrors brought upon them for 3000 years. No other race on this planet has suffered the level of torture and persecution as Jews have had to endure, so yes, they do deserve a free pass, whether you like it or not.
They deserve their homeland and if a bunch of Muslim extremists want to destroy that the good ol' USA will be right there helping them, whether you like it or not.
Really, you sound like you've been reading too many Pat Buchanan columns. He's a classic paleo-con Jew hater.
70 - Nancy
Of course jews deserve a homeland. I never said they didn't. You're reading far more into what I wrote than I put in there.
71 - Nancy
But no, having suffered discrimination & brutality themselves does NOT give them the right to go do it to others, any more than someone having beaten you up when you were a kid entitles you to use that as an excuse to go shoot someone tomorrow. That's akin to the good jewish joke about the guy who murdered his parents & threw himself on the mercy of the courts 'cause he was an orphan.
72 - Mark the Sane and Sensible
"But no, having suffered discrimination & brutality themselves does NOT give them the right to go do it to others,"
Excuse me, Nancy, but let me apprise you of a little fact ... Israelis act in self-defense only. You attack them, they attack you. A eye for an eye. That's the way it should be. That's they way I was taught as well. I can't think of a better way to live. It always keeps things even. No one can ever gain an advantage over you.
73 - Nancy
I agree with that, totally. Never said I didn't.
74 - Silas Kain
Oh, Marky Mark... you need to read my posts better before you shoot off that flap trap. I said:
So, no, I am not Jewish because the RELIGIOUS law says it comes down through the mother. I pretty much said that. It also bolsters my contention that being Jewish is not commensurate with being part of a race but part of a faith.My family lost plenty at the hands of the Nazis but we don't get to talk about those atrocities because we weren't "Jewish". We don't get to share the stories of the land that was taken from us or the family that was slaughtered in concentration camps because they weren't "Jewish". But we look like "Jews" whatever that's supposed to mean. So, get off your high horse and come down from the cross. There's no doubt about it that Jews were horribly exterminated at the hands of the Nazis. It's also fact that Jews have been persecuted through thousands of years. But don't you ever discount what my goyim family went through. Don't you dare discount the millions of Catholics, Christians and homosexuals that were slaughtered in those camps. Each and every life was just as valuable as the next regardless of foreskin.
75 - Al Barger
But Israel doesn't even fight eye-for-an-eye. They're not going on vengeance runs. They use FAR more restraint than that. They have been consistently trying to respond with the least, most carefully calculated violence possible. They just want to stop the terrorist attacks. They would do almost anything short of absolutely marching off into the sea as a mass suicide- if it would stop the attacks.